robotech_master

 So, wow.

First off, I've never been so thankful in my life that I work from home. Given that I'm part of the health insurance industry, working from home for them means that my job is one of the safest ever—in terms of avoiding infection, and in terms of avoiding being laid off during this time of economic turmoil. If anything, more people getting sick means I'll be more needed than ever.

Just got a notification from my employer that they're closing the building where I used to work, indefinitely, for "cleaning." Reading between the lines, I suspect someone displayed flu-like symptoms that could have been Corona or flu or a cold or anything else, and in the absence of an easily obtained test for Corona, they opted to be safe rather than sorry. Given that means several people from my department will not be working for the next little while, I suspect that means I'm in for a busy few days.

Meanwhile, I'm desperately worried about my septuagenarian parents, who are in the age group most likely to die from the virus, and my Dad has chronic asthma on top of that from the time he was a heavy smoker as a foolish young man. (I remember growing up he was still in the process of weaning himself off, with Copenhagen snuff, when I was growing up as a small child. I think he stopped that about the time I ran across some Copenhagen cans someone had discarded near the playground at my elementary school and decided to try it out for myself because Daddy used it so it must surely be all right.) 

The good news is, since they live in the rural Ozarks, on an 80-acre holding, they're about as well-positioned as they can be to live without ever needing to interact closely with another human. They could even go out for horseback rides to keep from getting stir crazy. The thing that worries me, though, is that they're very active in their church, of which my Dad is (if I'm not mistaken) a deacon. And while their church is pretty small, I really don't want them breathing the same air as any other people right now. It's too risky, because people with Corona are infectious before they even have symptoms.

On the bright side, when I went and checked the church's website right now, I noticed that it's in the process of getting set up to stream its services online, so that people at risk can view them while stuck at home. And that leads me to another realization about the Coronavirus epidemic: in one way it's kind of a good thing.

The epidemic is forcing businesses and organizations to accelerate their efforts to make it easier for people to take part from home, in ways they might never have done if they weren't forced to. I find it hard to imagine that any church as small as my parents' would ever have gotten interested in livestreaming its services if it hadn't been that so many of its congregation were most at risk from getting sick and dying from attending in person. 

In my day job, over the phone, I spoke to a couple of people today who let drop that they were working from home now. And I suspect that a lot of businesses and organizations are finding that their employees or members can perform their duties just as well from home as they could from the office. And at least some of these are gains that will stay with us after the virus has passed.

So, that's a good thing there. 

Now, if only we can contain the spread of the disease enough to let us get a handle on it…before we have to start triaging people like Italy…

Came in to the lobby of the Hammons Tower for work this morning to the loud WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! and flashing strobe light of the fire alarm, along with a prerecorded message telling me to leave the building by the nearest available exit. So I lingered in the lobby near the door, where I could make a break for it if the ceiling suddenly collapsed in a shower of blazing embers, along with about two dozen other people—it was heating up outside even then, and nobody was really eager to go out into the head and humidity for what was probably a false alarm. The fire alarm shut off a couple of times, but came right back on again 30 seconds later. A few eyebrows were raised when a fire truck pulled up in the circle drive and two firemen trouped in, one of them wearing an oxygen rig and carrying an axe. They wandered in and out of various halls, presumably looking for a faulty alarm box or something; a couple of minutes later an all-clear was given and I proceeded upstairs to the office.

My parents are in town today; I'm going to be having lunch with my Dad. I plan to take him to Harpo's, as they have steak dinners on special on Wednesdays. I used to go there all the time, but I got kind of sick of eating steak all the time. (Talk about jaded.) I'm also going to be handing back to him Napoleon Dynamite, which he lent me and I watched half of. I know my Mom and Dad love that movie, but I just couldn't get into it. It reminded me too much of my own school days, when I was almost as unknowingly socially inept as Napoleon. Very high cringe factor.

I took the movie with me to the BioKinetic study clinic, just in case anyone else there wanted to watch it, and the comment one fellow participant made about it while looking over my selection stuck in my head. Something to the effect of, "It's stupid, but if you like it you think it's stupidly funny." I find I have to agree with what Roger Ebert has to say about it:

( Excerpt from Ebert )

I don't know, I suppose it just drives home to me how different I am in some ways from my parents. They think it's funny because they never lived through it. I mean, honestly, how were they supposed to know what school was like for me? They weren't there with me. And if I say that this movie hits nerves because it's too close to my school experience, I don't think they really believe me. They're probably thinking I'm exaggerating, that nobody's school life could really be like that.

I kind of get the sense that the writer/director of Napoleon Dynamite might have made it as a form of catharsis, that he had much the same kind of school career as I did and this was his way of dealing with it. My own way of dealing with it is to try not thinking about it anymore. This movie makes it pretty hard.